Yipes takes Ethernet SLAs to microseconds

Yipes is offering new service level agreements (SLAs) for its global Ethernet services in a move it says is advancing Ethernet’s evolution to a more carrier-grade service.

Yipes’ new SLAs now offer 99.9% packet delivery across its global network, route-specific metro latencies averaging 5 milliseconds or less (longhaul latency SLAs are also route-specific but vary too much to provide a meaningful average) and jitter of 250 microseconds (or 0.25 milliseconds) or less.

Yipes’ previous SLAs offered metro latency of 10 milliseconds with no packet delivery or jitter specifics.

Latency is a measure of the speed of packet traffic across a network. Jitter is a measure of the variation in latency.

The company said it owes its new SLAs to a new performance measurement system it developed in-house dubbed HawkEye.

Yipes linked its metro points of presence with an MPLS backbone using Juniper Networks equipment between 2002 and 2004. The company is now in the final stages of rolling out virtual private LAN service across that backbone.

The company has more than 750 customers.